Some niches are more important than others, especially for some contestants in the U.S. home broadband market. Revenue growth is not always and necessarily the big story. A niche in fixed wireless might have outsized returns for firms such as T-Mobile, which historically has had zero market share in home broadband, or for Verizon, which not can compere nationwide in that market, where it historically has been limited to about 20 percent of the national U.S. market.
Fixed wireless is not new, having been used to support home broadband for decades. three million fixed wireless home broadband accounts in service in the United States, for example.
What is new is the ability of 5G fixed wireless to supply higher bandwidths with less deployment cost. Where traditional fixed wireless required direct line of sight positioning, 5G fixed wireless allows self installation by consumers with no elaborate wireless engineering work or a truck roll to install antennas.
And though fixed wireless also has been a niche platform--key for wireless internet service providers--it is a major platform for big mobile operators such as T-Mobile and integrated operators such as Verizon to enter or expand their share of the home broadband market.
"We expect fixed wireless will make up 45 percent of broadband net adds in 2022 and 50 to 55 percent thereafter," says ISI Evercore. "We expect that in 2025 fixed wireless will have seven percent share of total broadband subscribers.”
Right now it is a matter of debate whether the primary fixed wireless market will be in rural areas or elsewhere. But we might already note that, in the third quarter of 2021, though fixed wireless represented significant net account additions, the Fios fixed network garnered 43 percent of the new accounts.
One quarter later, fixed wireless accounted for 74 percent of home broadband net additions.
Fixed wireless might always be a niche, but it is a fast-growing niche and key for the home broadband aspirations of T-Mobile and Verizon.
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